ANALYSIS | Apprenticeships Over a decade of experience


Luke Wedgbury, owner of Coalville Kitchens, has spent the past decade training apprentices, initially going through training providers but now doing everything in-house. Coalville


Kitchens started with installer apprentices but is now branching out to design and sales roles


had other apprentices over the past decade who became employees and part of the business and some who have moved on and become self- employed or gone to work for another business.


W The apprentices have helped us


while they are here, but have also helped the broader sector. When you take on an apprentice and train them up, you get a few years out of them, then at some point, they move on to bigger and better things, and that is almost inevitable. Everyone should


e currently have two apprentices on the installation side. We’ve


we had hoped. The apprentices we have employed are accountable to us, and they take it more seriously. They jump in feet first and feel like they are part of the business. When doing it via a training provider, it always felt like they were employees of the training provider and were just on a placement with us, rather than being employed by us.


Pour everything into them and give them all the skills they need to succeed, but treat them well enough that they want to stay


be taking on apprentices as it is a powerful thing for the business and the industry. I am excited about apprentices being more mainstream for office-based roles like admin or design. That is what we are looking at this year. We are looking for a CAD designer and a sales designer apprentice. That is new territory for us, and we want to engage with someone that way. We would do much in-house training for the sales and design apprentices. But any other college courses they want to help them with their actual job, we would help them do – such as specific college courses or training through third parties like our CAD design software provider.


I focus on the outcome, which is that in three or four years’ time I will have somebody who is an asset to the business and they are trained up properly and are working well. I don’t care how they get to that stage – training in-house or out of house. We have gone through training providers, and it has worked OK. When you go to them, they go through a bunch of CVs of people who are interested.


But it wasn’t as successful as


Those schemes are wonderful, and I am a big advocate for them, as they offer a more straightforward service for people. There is also the plus of a qualification at the end. There is no NVQ or certificate when we do things in-house. We take on someone


full-


time and pay them a national working wage for their age, and


then we build the wage up in increments. We take all the risk, and while we pay the levy, we don’t use the funds. So, having someone full- time is more beneficial – we take the hit and risk, but it is an investment. We train them so that they could go somewhere else. Pour everything into them and give them all the skills needed to succeed, but treat them well enough that they want to stay.


New to the game


After many years of research and finding a suitable apprentice scheme, Elizabeth Pantling-Jones, managing director of Lima Kitchens in Milton Keynes, has taken on her first apprentice


because her trusted installers are retiring soon and she needed someone to take the reins


I


t had taken us a while to find the right course, but we now have a kitchen fitter app -


rentice who has been with us for a little over a year.


It is really


good to see that he is doing well. He can now be left on his own to start the kitchen installation without supervision and he is confident and competent. Seeing his development has been great.


Some advice from the facilitator was to pay a little bit more and take on an older apprentice, so our current apprentice is 25. At that age, they can give us what we need in terms of commitment and they will have a driving licence and a car. We took on the apprentice using the Fitted Interiors apprenticeship, which the BiKBBI and other industry bodies developed. We were excited about it, and BiKBBI CEO, Damian Walters suggested we go through a provider, which felt the most straightforward way, as we had never done it before. However, if we were to do it again, we are still debating whether we’d go down that route as, being a small business, we are already self-sufficient and independent.


Finding and accessing the courses at the start was difficult, because you don’t know where to look or things may not be the right fit. So my advice to others would be to shop around and not go for the first course you come across. To be realistic, there are many costs involved in taking on an apprentice. But, although there is much investment, a year down the line he is much more independent. So, we are already seeing a return on that investment.


The nice thing is that we can train them in how we want them to work


There needs to be a change in how people deliver apprentices, and that needs to start earlier with careers advice in schools. Industries need to be more proactive in making people aware of their companies and what jobs are out there for them. We work with subcontractors, and both will retire within the next few years. We always like subcontracting fitters and having more flexibility and control. Our ideal is that we would employ our current apprentice, and then once he is set up and trained, we will take on another. The nice thing about an apprentice is that we can train them in how we want them to work. Fitters are the final contact point, and we need a loyal team that works with us.


26


· February 2023


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